Nuro is branching out into robotaxis and personally owned autonomous vehicles

Nuro, the delivery robot company created by veterans of Google’s self-driving car project, is taking the bold — and risky — step to expand its business model to include robotaxis and personally owned autonomous vehicles. 

The California-based company, which currently operates a small fleet of delivery vehicles in California and Texas, doesn’t plan to build the vehicles itself. Instead, it will license its autonomous driving technology to outside companies, including car companies that want to use it for advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS) and rideshare operators for robotaxis. 

Nuro uses hardware provided by major companies like Nvidia and Arm to power its Nuro Driver, the company’s branding for the hardware and software used to power its autonomous delivery vehicles. While the software stack will run using technology from Nvidia and Arm, Nuro’s powertrain — electric motors and batteries — is developed by China’s BYD. The fact that Chinese-made EVs will likely face steep new tariffs under the Biden administration could be seen as a factor in Nuro’s decision to move into new, less trade-dependent territory. (A spokesperson for the company said that tariffs didn’t play a role in its decision-making.)

Nuro will tailor its Driver product to meet the specific use case of the licensing company, whether it’s a fully autonomous robotaxi or a partially autonomous ADAS feature. The company will also sell an AI platform of developer tools “to support AI development and validation for the Nuro Driver.”

It’s a risky step given the thorny regulatory requirements surrounding driverless vehicles that carry human passengers. Nuro is one of the few companies to have received an exemption from federal vehicle safety rules to deploy vehicles without certain controls, like sideview mirrors. This is partly due to the fact that the company has only delivered groceries and other household items in its self-driving vehicles; now, it’s proposing to deliver humans as well. 

Andrew Clare, Nuro’s chief technology officer, said the reason for the business model shake-up was twofold: first, the company’s self-driving technology has improved to the point where Nuro now believes it can handle a broader range of tasks beyond just delivery. 

“Our tech has gotten to the point where we believe very firmly that it is ready for more applications,” Clare said.

Secondly, when Nuro first launched eight years ago, Clare said there weren’t any car companies seriously planning to manufacture fully driverless Level 4-capable vehicles. If Nuro wanted to go that route, it would have had to build the hardware itself, and that would likely have been too pricey for an independent company without a well-capitalized backer. 

“Fast forward eight years, and there are now multiple OEMs who have recently been announcing that they are starting to create these platforms, either for mobility services or for consumer vehicles,” Clare said.

Nuro’s status as a “commercially independent” company that’s not owned by a major tech company gives it a leg up in conversations with potential partners, Clare said. Other major AV operators, like Waymo (owned by Alphabet), Cruise (General Motors), and Zoox (Amazon), can’t make similar claims. 

“They’re owned by big mothership companies,” he said. “That makes us a very strong partner for both mobility companies and OEMs.”

The news comes at a perilous time for autonomous vehicle developers. Companies are facing new questions about safety following several incidents in which people were injured by driverless vehicles. Outside investment has dwindled as deployment timelines have stretched further into the future. And surveys suggest that the public remains deeply skeptical about self-driving cars.

Nuro was founded in 2016 by Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, two veterans of the Google self-driving car project that would go on to become Waymo. It is one of the few companies operating fully driverless vehicles — that is, vehicles without safety drivers behind the wheel — on public roads today.

Nuro’s current fleet of vehicles, which operates in California and Texas, has traveled over 1 million miles autonomously without any major safety incidents, Clare said. That includes a mix of R1 and R2 vehicles as well as a fleet of Toyota Highlanders retrofitted with autonomous driving hardware. Nuro is also building a facility in Nevada, where it will manufacture its next-generation vehicles.

The company was forced to put its commercial expansion on pause and delay production of its R3 vehicle last year as it dealt with rising costs. The company also announced it was restructuring its business, resulting in the loss of 30 percent of its employees. 

The company is also the first AV operator to receive a special exemption from certain federal safety requirements and was the first to charge money for its driverless deliveries in California. 

Clare said Nuro is in a more “financially strong” position than it was two years ago. “We have multiple years of runway,” he said. “We certainly went through the painful period of restructuring two years ago, but that really put us in a very stable place financially.”

Clare insisted that the idea that people could someday own their own Level 4 autonomous vehicles — a controversial opinion in the world of AVs — was not a question of if but when. Some auto manufacturers are making plans to produce their own Level 4 vehicles for personal use, even as some experts insist that the safety and liability concerns remain too vast.

But Nuro thinks its own technology could help facilitate that shift, even if it’s still years away from reality.

“While it may not be available on the market today, it is coming,” Clare said. “It is simply a matter of time that it’s coming.”